White
Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Dayis
by far
the most comprehensive book on the Velvet Underground ever published.
The 368-page, 8 1/2" X 11"-sized book details the group's recording
sessions, record releases, concerts, press reviews, and other major
events shaping their career with both thorough detail and critical
insight. Drawing on about 100 interviews and exhaustive research
through documents and recordings rarely or never accessed, it unearths
stories that have seldom been told, and eyewitness accounts that have
seldom seen print, from figures ranging from band members to managers,
producers,
record executives, journalists, concert promoters, and fans.

Though White Light/White Heat: The Velvet
Underground Day-By-Day has plenty of information about what
happened when, it's not just a reference book. This chronologically
sequenced
overview of the band's life and times also offers weaves a wealth of
passionate analysis and musical description into the research.
The result is not just a document of their perpetually fascinating
performances, hirings, and firings, but also insight into the creation
of their music—the aspect of the Velvet Underground's legacy, after
all, that's by far the most enduring.

White Light/White Heat: The
Velvet
Underground Day-By-Day includes not only basic nuts-and-bolts
facts, but also many behind-the-scenes stories as to how their songs
were written and recorded; how their strikingly original stage shows
were devised; how the band were perceived by reviewers at the time of
their 1965-70 heyday, not just in retrospect; and how the group as a
whole underwent a most improbable, incessantly unpredictable evolution
from the most avant-garde of bohemian origins into a highly accessible,
yet still boldly creative, rock band by the time Lou Reed left the
group he'd co-founded with John Cale in early 1965.

While the bulk of White Light/White Heat: The Velvet
Underground Day-By-Day documents the period from 1965 to 1970
in which Lou Reed was the group's chief singer and songwriter, it also
offers in-depth coverage of the individual members' surprisingly
extensive (if mightily obscure) pre-1965 activities; the solo or non-VU
projects in which they were involved between 1965 and 1970, which were
numerous and often quite intimately related to what the group
themselves were doing; and the ways in which the band's legacy was both
influential and expanded upon after 1970, not only via the numerous
releases of unissued Velvets material, but also through how the
stature of their achievements grew and grew with a wealth of posthumous
honors and tributes. Along the way, many unreleased concert and studio
recordings are vividly described; many obscure and unlikely concerts
delineated; and many myths that have grown up around this most
legendary of all cult bands untangled and dissected.

White
Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day also
features more than 100 illustrations, including reproductions of rarely
or never seen photos, concert posters, contracts, letters, and other
assorted documents and memorabilia. It's the ultimate history of the
band that did more than any other to break down barriers between rock
music and the avant-garde, incorporating electronic innovations,
experimental instrumentation and improvisation, and lyrics detailing
the realities of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll with greater skill and
daring than anyone else. Click here for excerpts
from the book and lists/guides to the most interesting characters and
incidents in the Velvet Underground's amazing stranger-than-fiction
story.

Won't Get
Fooled Again: The Who from Lifehouse to Quadropheniadetails the
Who's amazing and peculiar journey in the years during which they
struggled to follow up Tommy with
a yet bigger and better rock opera. One of those projects, Lifehouse, was never completed,
though many of its songs formed the bulk of their 1971 album Who's Next. The other, Quadrophenia, was as down-to-earth
as the multimedia Lifehouse was
futuristic; issued as a double album in 1973, it eventually became
esteemed as one of the Who's finest achievements, despite unavoidable
initial unfavorable comparisons to Tommy.
Drawing on material from several dozen interviews and mountains of rare
archival coverage and recordings, it's the definitive account of this
fascinating period in the Who's career, which saw both some of their
greatest triumphs and, in Lifehouse,
rock's most spectacular failure. Click here
for excerpts from the book.

A mammoth 400-page, 300,000-word guide to the incredible
wealth of music the Beatles recorded that they did not release, as well
as musical footage of the group that hasn't been made commercially
available. Just published by Backbeat Books, the 8 1/2" X 11"-sized,
illustrated volume examines all unreleased studio outtakes, BBC radio
recordings from 1962-65, live concert performances, home demos, private
tapes, fan club Christmas recordings, and other informal recordings
done outside of EMI studios that have escaped into circulation.
Chronologically sequenced entries for all the Beatles' unreleased
recordings of note from 1957 to 1970 are here, as well as all the
unreleased Beatles musical video footage of note from 1961 to 1970.

Also included are overviews of songs composed by the Beatles that were
never recorded by the group, but given away to other artists;
recordings known or rumored to have been made by the group that haven't
yet circulated; Beatles compositions never recorded by anyone; coverage
of music the group didn't release while active, but later put out on
albums such as The Beatles at the
Hollywood Bowl, Live! At the
Star-Club, Live at the BBC,
Let It Be...Naked, and
the Anthology
volumes; and a history of Beatles bootlegs.

The Unreleased Beatles: Music
and Film is written with lively critical,
descriptive analysis emphasizing the music and its most human, artistic
qualities—and not just where and when the recordings were made. Click here for excerpts from the book, a
table of contents, and various Beatle-rarity-related lists of items
covered in the volume.

The second half of the two-volume history of 1960s folk-rock,
which
saw the movement branch off into folk-rock-psychedelia,
singer-songwriters,
country-rock, a distinctively British form of folk-rock, and more.
While
the Byrds, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, and other folk-rock
originals
continued to blaze innovative paths, space also opened for new talents
like Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and the folk-rock supergroup Crosby,
Stills, Nash & Young. Equally fine music was also made by
underrated
greats (Phil Ochs, Tim Buckley), artists who took decades to find cult
followings (Nick Drake, Skip Spence), and others who remain virtually
unknown
(Blackburn & Snow). Published by Backbeat Books in 2003, this
(like its predecessor, Turn! Turn! Turn! ) includes material
from
first-hand interviews with more than 100 of folk-rock's key players,
from
stars like Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Donovan, John Sebastian of the
Lovin'
Spoonful, and Judy Collins to behind-the-scenes producers and cult
artists. Click here for excerpts from the
book; transcripts
of interviews with folk-rockers; links to web pages devoted to
folk-rock
musicians and folk-rock in general; lists and descriptions of the
author's
favorite folk-rock recordings, both famous and obscure; and a
user-friendly
guide to folk-rock's most pivotal performers, songs, and
innovations.

The first half of a two-volume history of the thrilling
musical movement
that blended folk and rock in the mid-1960s, injecting social
consciousness
into popular music and creating some truly unequaled sounds by the
likes
of both stars (the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield), underrated greats
(Richard
& Mimi Fariña, Fred Neil), and the wholly unknown (the Blue
Things). Published by Backbeat Books in 2002, it includes material from
first-hand interviews with more than 100 of folk-rock's key players,
from
stars like Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Donovan, John Sebastian of the
Lovin'
Spoonful, and Judy Collins to behind-the-scenes producers and cult
artists.
The second half of the story (Eight Miles High), picking up
where Turn! Turn! Turn! leaves off in mid-1966 and following
folk-rock
all the way to the end of the 1960s, was published by Backbeat in 2003.
Click here for excerpts from the
book; transcripts
of interviews with folk-rockers; links to web pages devoted to
folk-rock
musicians and folk-rock in general; lists and descriptions of the
author's
favorite folk-rock recordings, both famous and obscure; and a
user-friendly
guide to folk-rock's most pivotal performers, songs, and
innovations.

Published in 1998 by Miller Freeman Books, Unknown Legends
of Rock'n'Roll profiles
60 underappreciated cult rock artists of all styles and eras, drawing
extensively
upon first-hand interviews. Click here for
a
list of the artists covered; excerpts from the book; links to web pages
devoted to the musicians, mini-genres of cult rock, and other sites
with
a bounty of info on obscure and unusual rock; reviews of new reissues
of
various unknown legends; and a rotating selection of author
favorites.

The sequel to Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll,documenting
twenty
cult rockers from the 1960s. No repeats from Unknown Legends of
Rock'n'Roll,
and just as long, with each chapter running about three times as long
as
the average chapter in Unknown Legends,allowing for extremely
detailed
investigation of the careers of greats like the Pretty Things, Arthur
Brown,
Richard & Mimi Fariña, and Tim Buckley. Click
here for a list of the artists covered; excerpts from the book;
links
to web pages devoted to the musicians, mini-genres of '60s cult rock,
and
other sites with a bounty of info on obscure and unusual '60s rock;
reviews
of new '60s reissues of various unknown legends; and various odds and
ends
illuminating hidden corners of rock's greatest decade.

A guide to the regional popular music of the United States,
published
by Penguin as part of the Rough Guides' music reference series in 1999.
Chapters on twenty cities and areas of the country, from New York and
Louisiana
to San Francisco and Hawaii, provide an overview of the evolution of
all
forms of twentieth-century American music, including rock, jazz, blues,
country, folk, Cajun, Tex-Mex, soul, Native American, rap, zydeco, and
more. Includes capsule reviews of several hundred of the most crucial
recordings,
and guides to the best venues and radio stations in each region, as
well
as to the best books and videos for further investigation. Click
here for excerpts from the book; transcripts of interviews of
various
musicians, incorporated into feature sidebars in the book; and lists of
recommended listening for various American musical genres.

Want to Buy a Book?

All of my books are widely available at both independent
booksellers
and chain bookstores throughout North America, as well as many such
outlets
overseas. To order on-line via amazon.com, click on the appropriate
book
cover below.